Congress Probing Obama’s Firing of AmeriCorps Watchdog

June 18, 2009

There’s more today on President Obama’s firing of Gerald Walpin, the inspector general for AmeriCorps who put out negative audits of City University’s Teaching Fellows program and of former NBA star and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson’s Hope Academy.

The American Spectator writes that House Republican staffers are mulling how to proceed in their investigation of last week’s firing.

On Tuesday, Darrell Issa sent a letter to White House counsel Gregory Craig, demanding the release of all email and other communications between the Justice Department’s criminal division and the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California, the Spectator reports.

Walpin found that Johnson’s program misused close to $1 million in AmeriCorps funding, some of it on personal expenses. He referred his Hope Academy findings to federal prosecutors in California for a possible criminal investigation. But that office filed no charges.

So, was his firing retaliatory or not? Well, the Spectator points out that Michelle Obama’s former chief of staff Jackie Norris recently left the White House to become the head of the Corporation for National and Community Service, the organization that oversees Americorps.

Is this a signal that the era of good feelings with the Obama administration is coming to an end? We’ll see.